James Tupper goes solar, saves gas

'Revenge' star conserves energy at home and on the road.

PARTNERS IN CRIME: James Tupper and Madeline Stowe in 'Revenge'. (Photo: Eric McCandless/ABC)

“In California, I feel like it’s ridiculous that every single house doesn’t have solar because we have so much sunshine, 90 percent of the days,” says “Revenge” star James Tupper, who is having solar panels installed on the roof of the home he shares with wife Anne Heche and their sons. He also loves tooling around town on his Vespa motorbike. “It has zero emissions and I can go 120 miles on fie dollars for a tank,” he points out. Heche objects to him using it to commute the 20 miles to work at the “Revenge” set, but they often go for “date night” rides up Mulholland Drive in the hills, “very romantic,” he says.

On “Revenge,” he’s seen in flashbacks as the late David Clarke, the catalyst for his daughter’s (Emily Van Camp) plot to get even with those at fault for her father’s trumped up imprisonment, and ultimately his death. Tupper was drawn to the idea of playing a man in such dire circumstances, “because was a period in my life where I lost everything. It’s a really long story,” he says, not wishing to elaborate, but does concede that the success of the ABC series “is my revenge.” He had a good hunch that the series would be a hit from the time he was the finished pilot. “I did have a feeling right off the bat. There’s not a bad actor in the group,” he says, singling out Madeleine Stowe for particular praise.

Tupper has two films due out this year, “Decoding Annie Parker,” about the search for a cure for breast cancer, with Samantha Morton and Helen Hunt, and “Playing the Field,” a romantic comedy that places him in a love triangle with Jessica Biel and Gerard Butler. “She’s my fiancée and he comes back into the picture. It’s complicated,” he says about the movie, which will be released next Christmas.